Valentina Cerrato joined NICO in 2013 as a post-graduate fellow in Prof. Ferdinando Rossi’s research group, where she took her first steps in studying the development of the mouse cerebellum and astrocyte heterogeneity. In 2014, she became a PhD student in Neuroscience, joining the “Physiopathology of Neural Stem Cells” research group under the supervision of Prof. Annalisa Buffo. She earned her PhD degree cum laude in 2018 with a thesis entitled “Astrogliogenesis in the cerebellum results from progenitors with distinct fate potencies and proliferative behaviors,” which provided significant insights into the ontogenesis of cerebellar astrocytes through an advanced in vivo clonal analysis approach. As a postdoctoral researcher, she continues to study cerebellar astrocyte lineages, focusing on molecular mechanisms through innovative multi-omic approaches. Throughout these years, she has enhanced her expertise by visiting the labs of Prof. L.L. Mascaraque (Madrid) and L. Telley (Lausanne), where she gained new skills that she has applied to her research.
Research focus
Dr. Cerrato’s primary research interest lies in understanding the ontogenesis of astrocyte diversity in the human and mouse cerebellum and their roles in both physiological and pathological processes involving this brain region. In her PhD project, she demonstrated that cerebellar astrocyte heterogeneity is driven by a tightly regulated developmental program that generates distinct astrocyte lineages with stereotyped behaviors. This was achieved using a sophisticated in vivo clonal analysis approach, which she imported from Prof. López-Mascaraque’s lab in Madrid and further integrated with 3D reconstructions, in silico modeling, and histological analyses. Additionally, Valentina identified a crucial role for the transcription factor Sox2 in the proper differentiation of Bergmann glia, which may have implications for ataxia. Currently, as a postdoctoral researcher, she is pursuing the study of cerebellar astrocyte lineages using single-cell RNA sequencing and spatial transcriptomics to unravel the molecular mechanisms that define the unique characteristics of astrocyte types and their functional roles, in both the mouse and human cerebellum.
